Safety Net
by shatterthoughts
Summary: He's not going to do it. It's just in case. - Dark, but happy ending, major trigger warning.


**REALLY REALLY TRIGGERING - but happy ending - pm me for details if you need to know more before reading, otherwise, here you go.**

They don't know, and it's better that way, or at least Barry thinks it's better that way. Because if they don't know, they can't ask questions, and if they don't know they can't worry, but most of all, if they don't know, they can't stop him, if he really does decide, if he really has to, if things ever really get that bad.

And that's all it is. That's what he tells himself. He won't actually do it, he just has to have that option there, like a safety net. He doesn't need it, he won't fall, but he needs the net under him to have the confidence to even walk out on that tight rope in the first place. That's what he tells himself. He won't do it, he just needs to know that he _could._

So, yeah, maybe it's a little bit warped of a sense of thinking, but he's not going to do it. He's too scared to anyway, so it doesn't even matter – he's just being melodramatic, it's not a big deal anyway.

And yeah, he has the bottle of pills stashed under his bed, and yeah, maybe he takes it out every once in a while, but he's not going to do it. He just looks at the bottle, turns it over in his hands, puts it away. And it's enough calm to let him sleep at night, to soothe the dread and grief and sadness enough for the moment. Months will go by where he doesn't even think about it. It's not a big deal.

That doesn't change the fact that when Iris finds the bottle in eleventh grade she freaks, runs downstairs and demands an explanation. And when he begs her not to tell Joe, that it's not a big deal, that it's not what it looks like – at that point he'll admit to having them to get high off if it means she doesn't guess the truth. And she marches downstairs with the phone in her hand with him running after her, still begging, pleading, making up excuses. And it doesn't change the fact that when Joe finds out he leaves the precinct without telling anyone where he's going, that he's in such a daze he forgets to tell the captain, to tell anyone. It doesn't change the fact that when he gets home he stares, and then there's silence, awful silence and Iris is crying and Barry is trying not to and it's not fair because it doesn't matter, he wasn't going to do it, it was just a safety net, just a safety net, and he's trying to explain but they're not listening, and they take the bottle and Joe gets rid of it and later that night when Barry's spiraling, digging through the cabinets for something, anything to replace it, he realizes Joe locked every medication possible to overdose on up in his room and Barry screams and cries because he needs that safety net, needs to know he can if he has to.

And then there's another therapist and there's medication that he doesn't take and Iris with that look on her face, half scared, half accusing, always that pity sympathy line that he can never make out, and he's angry, he's angry at her for telling, but he's angrier at Joe for taking it, and he knows he's being unreasonable, irrational, but they're not listening and he's spiraling and he's standing on that tight rope wire, looking down, and they can't see that he's going to fall.

He looks up over the counter medications, because he stole the first bottle at a friend's house, one he knew that wouldn't be missed, and he doesn't know what to do now. Joe has the gun, but he keeps it locked up, always, no exceptions. There's chemicals in the downstairs kitchen cabinets, but soon he finds the bleach is gone and he's not sure what else will do it. The car in the garage will wake Joe up if he tries to set it running, and he could always find something that could do as rope, but he'd probably have to find a tree outside. He doesn't know what would work inside, doesn't think the shower rod will cut it, is pretty sure the fan would break under his weight, and then it would have to be at night, because if he's outside someone could see, and it was all so much easier when he had a nice quiet bottle of pills, that dirty little secret he hid under his bed, that invisible safety net no one could see. They all thought he was standing up there doing his tricks, so strong, so brave, but all the time he knew the net was there, and now it's gone, and he's back to that scared kid looking down, sure he's going to fall.

He's not going to do it. He was never going to do it. So why was it so hard to not have it?

He knows and he doesn't, and it's at that edge of his mind, that fuzzy edge where everything he thought he'd never do is suddenly in focus. It's at that line between clear headed and emotion, it's where that pit in his stomach comes up like an iceberg, deadly and silent and massive. It threatens to consume him, and it sucks up the rationality, the optimism, the hope, and it twists his thoughts around until it seems like the only option, until it seems like no big deal, until it isn't a big deal, until it's really his only choice, until it's normal, until he should just do it, until he has to do it. And it's a gaping black hole, a lens that warps his vision, a drug that changes his perception where the hallucinations are nothing frightening, that offer rest and a dark emptiness that is anything but scary, that is anything but bad, but repulsive. And he's selling his soul one piece at a time to it, cutting off fingers one by one and dropping them in, until he can't grip that stick to help him balance, until he's cut off his arms, until he's left with one leg, and he doesn't realize it, doesn't realize he's done it all to himself, that the safety net he thought was there was really just some mirage he imagined for himself. Suicide was a pool he put himself over, and the bottle of pills was a lead weight around his neck.

So when he falls, sometime around the beginning of his senior year, when his mom's birthday is tomorrow and he wants to visit his dad like he does every year on the day, but there's construction at the prison, so he can't, when his classes are getting harder and he has to apply to colleges, and Iris is mad at him for something, and he's just failed a test, and he falls – he doesn't have the pills. So he goes into the hallway, at two am, and knocks on the door until he wakes up, and Joe comes out, and he blinks at Barry in the hallway, and he doesn't say anything.

They go downstairs and eat ice cream. Barry falls asleep on the couch. He stays home from school the next day with Iris, and they watch movies. And Barry finds a safety net hidden in the darkness below that tight rope, one he could never see from up that high. But looking back, he should have realized it was there.

Because it is a big deal, and he had to fall to see it.

**Yeah, so you should review because it would make me really happy :) **


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